2 REPORr OF STATE GEOLOGIST. 



but they also allow twenty millions or more cubic feet of gas to 

 escape daily because they are too indolent to plug or cap the wells 

 which have been bored for oil. Indiana supplies, at ridiculously low 

 prices, two millions of the citizens of Chicago with the greater part 

 of the coal, gas and petroleum which they use. Individually those 

 consumers may pay high enough for their fuels, but the producer who 

 secures the fuels from the bowels of our noble State — or rather the 

 middle-man who buys from the producer, pays less than one-fifth 

 their real value. He gets his coal for 80 cents to $1.05 per ton; his 

 oil at 41 cents per barrel; his gas at 2 cents per thousand cubic feet. 

 His only additional expense is for transportation, which, in the case 

 of the oil and gas, is but a nominal sum. Those citizens of Indiana 

 who, by right of ownership of the surface, claim the fuels which lie 

 beneath that surface, are content to take these meagre sums because 

 they do not know the real value of that which they are selling. Since 

 they have not produced these fuels by the sweat of their brows, as they 

 have their corn, oats and wheat, they do not realize their value. Sur- 

 rounded as they are by the plenty of the present, it is difficult for them 

 to realize that the time will come, and that before many years, when the 

 stored reservoirs of at least two of these fuels within the borders of 

 our State, will have been drained, and only the dregs be left as a 

 reminder of the plenty that has been. 



Report of Progress on Coal Survey. — The principal work of 

 the Department of Geology during the year 1897 was done upon 

 the coal survey which was started the previous year and which, 

 it is hoped, will be finished in 1898. During the field season, from the 

 middle of April imtil the first of November, 1897, the following 

 counties were surveyed: Warren, Fountain, Vermillion, Parke, Vigo, 

 Clay, Sullivan and Greene, and those parts of Benton, Montgomery, 

 Putnam and Owen included in the coal fields — a total of about 3,200 

 square miles. The field party included Messrs. G. H. Ashley, in 

 charge, C. E. Siebenthal, E. M. Eandle and J. T. Scovell, the latter two 

 being in the field only part of the season. Each m^ember of the party 

 had definite areas to work up, and will be responsible for the details 

 of those areas. This, with the work of last season in Knox, Daviess 

 and Martin counties, completes the field work north of the East Fork 

 of White Eiver, or a total area surveyed of 4,500 square miles. Two 

 weeks were also spent in Pike County, during which most of the mines 

 were visited and much information obtained which will not be avail- 

 able in the Spring when the survey of the county will be completed. 



In that portion of the area which has been finished every mine has 

 been visited, and, as far as time would allow, every known outcrop, 



